A serial rapist who county police say has assaulted three Glen Burnie women in apartment buildings since April has been linked to two rapes and a sexual assault in Virginia earlier this year.

Police say they believe the man struck Monday when he raped an employee of Americana Southdale Apartments in a laundry room at knifepoint.

Because of witness descriptions and the man's method of operation, police suspect he is the assailant in two rapes at Glen Burnie apartment buildings April 10, a rape at an Alexandria, Va., apartment May 6, and a rape in Fairfax County, Va., and a robbery and sexual assault in Alexandria, both on May 12.

In four of the incidents, the man attacked women in laundry rooms and twice in their apartments, police said. All the attacks occurred during daylight hours. The women assaulted range in age from 29 to 58.

The string of sexual attacks began shortly before 1 p.m. April 10 when a man with a silver gun walked through the open sliding glass door of a ground-level apartment in the 300 block of Gatewater Court, approached the resident and threatened to kill her. The man raped the woman, police said.

About an hour later, a woman was cleaning a laundry room at Americana Southdale Apartments when a man approached, held a silver gun to her head and raped her, police said.

On May 6, an Alexandria, Va., woman reported she was raped in her Edsall Road apartment, Alexandria police said. The woman told officers she heard a knock at her door about 11: 30 a.m. and opened it for a man she thought was from the maintenance department, police said.

Six days later, Fairfax County police said, a man followed a woman into the laundry room of her building in Springfield, Va., about 3 p.m., beat her, and raped her.

Shortly after 4 p.m. the same day, a man approached a woman in the laundry room of a North Van Dorn Street building, pushed her to the ground and demanded her necklace, Alexandria police said.

The woman gave him the necklace, and the man sexually assaulted her, police said.

The man did not use a weapon in any of the Virginia cases, according to spokeswomen from those police departments.

In the attack Monday, the man used a pocket knife, police said.

Victims described the man as black, 25 to 30 years old, about 6 feet tall with a stocky build and between 190 and 250 pounds. He had a thin mustache and clean-cut hairstyle and wore a dark-blue knit or baseball cap.

In the April attacks in Glen Burnie, witnesses said he wore a black, three-quarter-length leather coat. During Monday's attack, he wore a brown leather jacket and a dark blue sweat suit.